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Comment by loeg | Hacker News Reader

GP's comment can of course be read more correctly as "the purpose of existing drug laws (in the US), ..."

Sweden has harsh drug laws too. So does China. The point is that there are other reasons people favor drug laws, since many homogenous countries have them too.

And yet the literal tons of fentanyl and fentanyl derivatives that are swamping black markets in the US and killing thousands are almost exclusively manufactured in China and shipped to the US.

I'd take 10 years in a swedish prison over 3 months in a US prison...

"Harsh" is very relative. I would be very surprised to see anyone caught using drugs for the first time, or even the 3rd time, not just getting a fine unless they're in possession of a larger quantity. The maximum sentence is 3 years, which I would assume would require a substantial criminal record.

China also has concentration camps. Just saying...

Canada had very harsh drug laws too (at least for hard drugs). And so did much of Europe.

Did all those countries also create those laws to harass certain populations?

How many did basically at the behest of the US? The US very much lead the crusade on drugs criminalisation after WWII.

All of them, it's part of the founding UN treaties, as far as I know.

The People's Republic of China has maintained its draconian anti-drug stance since before the international drug conventions of the 60s and 70s.

I would concur much of the puritanism and authoritarianism around the world about drugs originates from the US, but hardly all of it.

They were actually agreed upon by the UN. It didn’t take the US to convince other countries to make drugs illegal.

In many cases yes: European attitudes towards the lower classes are often similar to (though not as extreme as) racist attitudes in the US.

Lots of European countries (and probably the rest of the world) also copy US laws for no apparent reason.

More or less everyone I know has tried drugs (MJ, magic mushrooms, LSD) or does them on a regular basis, but I don't know anyone who's ever been arrested over it. What I'm saying is there doesn't seem to be (much) of a stigma against drugs, neither with the population, nor with the cops. Nevertheless, MJ is illegal, and the protests for legalization started soon after the ones in the US.

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